Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I am new to MAC and this forum so please accept my apology.

O.k., I have a 13 inch MacBook (pre-latest rollout). I am running Mac OSX Leopard latest version. I have 2 GB of RAM.

I'll try to simplify my question:

Without thinking it through I turned on Time Machine and it created a 30 GB partition.

I went into disk utility and erased the partition and turned off Time Machine.

The partition is readable and writable and is the lower of the three partitions.

I'd like to install Windows XP in the former Time Machine partition

I know that I must change the partition to FAT32 in order to install Windows XP.

Can I accomplish this or must I strart over. If I must start over I want to reclaim all the disk space into a single partition. I'll then invoke Boot Camp and carve out about a 20-25 MB partition for XP.

Boot from the install DVD. Once the machine boots up, after you choose the Language and hit Continue, go to Utilities in the menu bar and choose Disk Utility. From there you can erase the whole drive. Choose the whole disk in the Disk Utility window on the left, click the Partition tab on the right, choose 1 partition under Volume Scheme, click the Options button, choose GUID, click Okay. In the Disk Utility window then click Apply. You will then have one GUID volume. Quit Disk Utility. Go ahead and re-install the system, and after you reboot to the hard drive you can use Boot Camp Assistant to create your Ubuntu partition.

When you installed OSX again with the full erase, you only erased what was on the partition with the install.

What you need to do is what Michael said:

Open up Disk Utility in Utility folderselect your HD from the base level (it should show 2 on the left side under the HD name, something like this I believe: Hard drive seagate xxxxxx name A macintosh Hard drive name B xxxxx

Select the top level, seagate xxx or WD or whatever brand.

on the right side of that window will be a selection to Partition your hard drive.

Select that, then select 1 partition. It should make the little window in there one big one instead of 2. Then select OK or whatever.

Bear in mind this is all from my memory as I am on a PC at work. \

Here is a screenshot I found online:

See where it says 2 partitions in the middle there? Just change that to 1 and you should be good to go.

The only thing you forgot is to make sure it's the GUID partition scheme, not Master Boot Record like in the pic you posted or one can't combine or add partitions later without reformatting the whole drive.

I prefer making one partition in Disk Utility, then letting Boot Camp do the partitioning.

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